Rethinking mental health care: bridging the credibility gap

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Speaker information

Vikram Patel

Speaker: Vikram Patel, FMedSci
Innovations in global mental health have focused on addressing the ‘supply side’ barriers to reduce the
treatment gap and, in doing so, have redefined three core assumptions regarding mental health care,
namely, what comprises a mental health care intervention, who is a mental health care provider and
what is a mental health care setting. However, such innovations alone will not reduce the treatment gap
because of the gap between the understanding of mental disorder that mental health specialists use, which I will illustrate
through the diagnostic systems and epidemiological instruments arising from them,
and how the rest of the world conceptualises psychological suffering.